Disabled Oklahomans Catch a Break, For Now

Last month, I wrote about some disabled folks in Oklahoma who received a letter that frightened them deeply.

The letter was from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. It said: “We regret to inform you that DHS must eliminate the ADvantage Waiver effective December 1, 2017.”

Richard Anderson of Norman, Oklahoma, is one of 21,000 disabled people served by ADvantage, a state-run program similar to others across the land. He has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair. His meager income is from Social Security. He’s able to live in his own apartment because assistants come in eighteen hours a week and prepare his meals, help him shave and shower, and attend to other tasks. ADvantage pays his assistants’ $11.55-per-hour salaries.

If ADvantage was suddenly eliminated, as Anderson and many others were told it would be, that

would all be gone.

Happily, Oklahoma’s governor and legislature have stepped up and saved ADvantage, at least for now. Says Anderson, “I didn't sleep well while this was going on.”

This all began over the summer when a majority of state lawmakers imposed a “fee” of $1.50 on each pack of cigarettes purchased in the state in an attempt to address a budget shortfall. But Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. were among those that filed a lawsuit in response and the state supreme court shot the fee down as unconstitutional, because it takes a 75 percent legislative majority to pass a new tax in Oklahoma.

That created a $59 million budget hole that put the ADvantage program at risk. The blowback to the announced plans to end the program was so great—including a threatened ACLU lawsuit—that even Oklahoma’s super-conservative governor, Mary Fallin, took notice.

He was planning to buy fewer groceries and disconnect his landline telephone, hoping to save enough money to pay his assistants to come in at least a few hours each month.

When the legislature presented her with a budget in November, she vetoed all but five sections. “The budget that was just passed does not provide a long-term solution for recurring revenue,” she said in a video statement. But she left intact a $26.9 million appropriation that will fund ADvantage for three more months.

It’s hard to believe Oklahoma lawmakers would actually have allowed ADvantage to disappear. But Anderson was absolutely convinced that it might happen.

“I was scared that ADvantage would go away, knowing Oklahoma government like I do,” he relates. “I was preparing for life without ADvantage.”

He was planning to buy fewer groceries and disconnect his landline telephone, hoping to save enough money to pay his assistants to come in at least a few hours each month. “I don't eat but one meal a day already because Oklahoma is stingy with their food stamps,” he says. “And without my phone, I’ll have no way of calling someone if I needed help, much less communicate with my aide or family.”

And Anderson—like, no doubt, a lot of other people—is convinced the standoff will happen again. “We are gonna be in the same situation in a few months, fighting for our lives,” he says. “Considering local and federal government, the future scares the hell out of me.”

Mike Ervin is a writer and disability rights activist living in Chicago. He blogs at Smart Ass Cripple, “expressing pain through sarcasm since 2010.”